St. Petersburg Day 1 & Housing
I’m back to Moscow for 4 days before heading to Cairo, Egypt for Thanksgiving break. Wow St. Petersburg was quite the trip!!! The entire group of 18 Stanford students spent 8 days in St. Petersburg touring around various museums and learning about the heavily influenced European city of St. Petersburg. We left on Friday the 12th, on an overnight train and arrived Saturday morning about 7am. I had never traveled on an overnight train but I have to say it was actually pretty fun. It was an enjoyable experience regardless of the sweltering heat on the train.
On the first day in St. Petersburg the housing assignments for next winter at Stanford were posted on the Internet. So shortly after arriving there were a lot of mixed emotions running through the group. FINALLY though lady luck was on my side and I received GREAT housing!!! I’m really excited to be living in Terra for the remained of my junior year at Stanford. Terra is a cooperative house in the Cowell cluster of houses. Tridelta is also in the Cowell cluster so I will be living right next to Tridelt!!! The cooperative part of Terra means that all the students cook and clean. I am required to cook 1 meal every two weeks. (So start sending in your recipe ideas!!!) Also we have clean the house every so often. Even though this living situation won’t be a “cushy” as having a chef and janitor to take care of me I am excited about the change of pace and the challenge and cooking for such a large group. ALSO another big part of Terra’s image on campus is that they are the Gay and Lesbian community house. Of course not everyone who lives in Terra is homosexual but many of the members from the Gay and Lesbian community at Stanford choice to live there. I am excited about living in Terra because I will learn more about a community of people that I previously did not have that much knowledge about; I am looking forward to learning about the struggles of a the community. I definitely received the best housing out of the juniors here in Moscow and the best housing for me personally because I could find myself isolated in an apartment off campus away from Tridelt and the center of campus. I have no doubt that my peers will be able to handle if not even flourish in such living conditions but for me personally I am really happy with where I drew to live. For the remainder of the day we took a bus tour around St. Petersburg to familiarize ourselves with the city. Indeed St. Petersburg is a very beautiful city but not a very traditional Russian city.
St. Petersburg—Day 2 The Hermitage
First I need to give credit for Ms. Grace Jones because I am reviewing her blog while writing mine. Grace is much more organized than me and was able to post everyday from St. Petersburg. I’m using her blog as a crutch (to sort out the days on which we visited what places) because in line with my procrastinator tendencies I am trying to recall the jammed packed 8 days spent in St. Petersburg from my desk in Moscow. Thank you Grace for keeping track of both of our lives.
Anyway on Sunday November 14th we spent the whole day visiting the Hermitage. The Hermitage is the largest museum in the world by number of exhibitions, 3 million to be exact. Several buildings make up the Hermitage but the most famous of course is the Winter Palace. This beautiful winter green palace sits along the river and even without the impressive artwork that it houses it as a building alone is a work of art. Grace did the math and it would take you 69 days to see the whole museum if you looked at every exhibition for 2 seconds!!!! Fortunately we only stayed at the museum from 10:30-4:30, which is still a considerable about of time, but nothing compared to everything we missed seeing. However I wouldn’t trade what we did see for what we missed because I saw some very famous art and was very impressed by it all. I saw works by Da Vinci, Michael Angelo, Raffael, Donatello, Picasso, Monet, Van Gough, Rodin, and last but not least the largest collection of Rembrandt paintings in the world! On our way back to the hotel several of us broke off from the group and visited the Kazan Cathedral. This massive Russian Orthodox cathedral is unlike anything I have ever seen. On the first day on our bus tour when I saw this building my breath was literally taken away. The cathedral is similar to Roman architecture but since I have never seen any Roman architecture in person I was shocked at the effect this massive building had on me. I was eager to visit the building up close and thoroughly enjoyed getting to go inside the cathedral. I never would have thought that a building would have had that effect on me but now it has only made me want to visit more famous examples of ancient architecture all over the world.
I can’t wait to see what I think of the pyramids!!!!!!!!!
Jean
No comments:
Post a Comment